Lanshaw CR-09, Burley Moor, West Yorkshire

Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 13444 45444

Getting Here

Lanshaw Cup-marked Stone

A bit hard to locate. Take the route past the Haystack Rock onto the Idol Stone and Idol Rock, uphill, for a few hundred yards till you meet the distinct vegetational change and pits of Lanshaw Delves that run east-west. At this point on top of the path, walk to your left, due east, for 270 yards (247m), staying along the top of the ridge, then when you reach the flat-topped cup-and-ring marked Lanshaw Stone, head due north going down the heathery slope for about 50 yards until you find this reasonably large though flat earthfast stone. If you wanna locate it, you’ll find it!

Archaeology & History

Close-up of cupmarks

On an excursion that was exploring the relationship between prehistoric tombs and rock art in the area, this shallow carving was found that had, in a confusing way, been mis-catalogued in the archaeology registers – which confused us poor simpletons at the time!  Initial investigation indicated one primary cup-marking near the east-side of the stone, but when highlighted there was the possibility of another faint cup on the same section of the rock, just above the obvious one – but this still isn’t clear.

Cup-marks in better light

Found in association with other prehistoric remains close by, the carving is one that will probably be of interest just to those hardcore rock-art freaks amongst you.  However, there are a dozen other carvings close by, several of which are impressive cup-and-ring designs.  It’s one of around 50 cup-and-ring carvings on Rombald’s Moor that’s not in the Boughey & Vickerman (2003) survey — and this isn’t an easy one to see unless the lighting conditions are right.  This low rounded (female) rock has, since its initial discovery by the hardworking Mrs Potts, been stripped of its vegetation by members of the Ilkley CSI team when they found it for themselves.  Worth looking at if you’re exploring the other carvings nearby.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Brown Law (310), Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire

Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 13191 46512

Also Known as:

  1. Carving no.149 (Hedges)
  2. Carving no.310 (Boughey & Vickerman)

Getting Here

3 cups gently sleeping

Get to the Cow & Calf Rocks, go up across the car-park as if you’re gonna go up onto the moor and walk up the steep footpath uphill to the left of the crags.  Once you get level with the crags, take the footpath bending left and walk along here for 110 yards, keeping your eyes peeled for the low smooth rock on the right of the footpath, just where another path meets it. You’ll find it.

Archaeology & History

Close-up, from above

This quiet little stone has seen better days.  Nearly destroyed a few weeks ago when the Emmerdale Farm film-crew churned up sections of the moor right over the side of this carving—but thankfully it still remains intact (you or I would have been prosecuted for such damage).* The carving is a simple one in graphic terms, comprising simply of three cup-markings, all on the southern side of the rock.  Close to several other petroglyphs (the Wray Stone is 78 yards north and several other more ornate carvings are close by), the carving was first described in the Hedges (1986) survey as a “small, low smooth grit rock sloping slightly NW to SE in crowberry, bilberry, grass and bracken. Three clear cups.”  But it has to be said, one of them is fading fast.  Let’s hope this humble little carving doesn’t fall prey to those who are gradually turning our moorlands into a park.

References:

  1. Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
  2. Hedges, John, The Carved Rocks on Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
* As the footpaths on Ilkley Moor continue to be widened and paved by those who reckon they like these moors, it’s obvious that more prehistoric sites up here are gonna get damaged. It’s difficult to see what the local archaeologist or Natural England are doing to ensure that these stupid environmentally damaging schemes do not encroach on the mass of rich prehistoric sites on the moors, most of which have never been adequately assessed (the philosophy of “if we don’t know it’s there, it doesn’t matter if we destroy it” seems evident in some of those working for the local council). Before any work or structures are dug on Ilkley Moor, an archaeological assessment is, I believe, supposed to take place – but I think this ‘work’ consists merely of looking at their own limited records, without any detailed fieldwork being undertaken. But as we know from research undertaken by rock art students at TNA, CSI and elsewhere, there are still many cup-and-ring stones, cairns and archaeological features constantly being discovered on these moors that are not in the record books.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Carrot Hill, Inverarity, Angus

Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – NO 4545 4000

Getting Here

Newly found cup-marked stone

The stone is situated on the north-facing slope of Carrot Hill (almost equidistant with neighbouring Dodd Hill actually) at 225 m OD.  Use of a  GPS and the co-ordinates above are very definitely recommended for finding this stone which lies flat on a heather covered hillside.  You most likely won’t locate it without them.  There is ample car parking space at the popular viewpoint car park on Carrot Hill (NO 464 408), walk to the summit trig point and follow your GPS from there.

Archaeology & History

This cup-marked stone was first noticed in February 2012.   Remarkably, this stone seems to have been previously unrecorded despite lying just metres from a small path through the heather.

There are at least 15 cup marks on this sandstone boulder which was measured to be  1.2 x 0.7 x 0.2 m in size.  There is no evidence of any rings around any of the cups. 

The closest known examples of more rock art are just over four kilometers away to the west at Huntingfaulds where there is a cup and ring marked boulder.

© Stuart Anthony, 2012


Baildon Moor Carving (173), West Yorkshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 13844 40347

Also Known as:

  1. Carving no.40 (Hedges)

Getting Here

The lovely ‘Carving 173’, Baildon Moor

From Baildon go up onto the moor, turning left to go round Baildon Hill and onto Eldwick, stopping at the car park at the top of the brow. Cross the road and walk along past carving 184, making sure you keep right sticking to the footpath that runs along the edge of the slope (not onto the flats & up to Baildon Hill itself). There are several carvings along here, but this one’s on the right-side of the widening path, another 300 yards past carving 184. Keep your eyes peeled – y’ can’t really miss it!

Archaeology & History

Carving 173, looking south

In my 1982 notebook I described this as “a very well-preserved cup-and-ring stone, with two cup-and-rings and seven other cup-marks. There seems to be faint remains of other lines carved by some of the cups.”  And the description is as apt today as it was back then – though neither of the surrounding ‘rings’ are complete.  However, as the photos here indicate, adjacent to the main cup-and-ring near the centre of the stone another incomplete cup-and-ring is evident, emerging from the natural crack that runs across it.  In the subsequent surveys of Hedges (1986) and Boughey & Vickerman (2003) they somehow only saw one cup-and-ring on this rock.  Easily done I suppose!  In certain light there’s what may have been an attempted second surrounding ring starting on one of the cups…but I’ll leave that for a later date…

CR-173 (after Hedges)
Slippery when wet!

There may also have been intent to carve another ring around one of the other cups on the northern half of the stone.  This possible fourth ring and its position on the stone potentiates solar symbolism (not summat I’m keen on, tbh), which fits into the position and nature of several other cup-and-rings in this region and which I’ll expand on and highlight a little later on.  It is important to remember that this petroglyph and its nearby relatives were once accompanied by a series of tumuli, or prehistoric burial mounds: a feature that is not uncommon in this part of the world.  Well worth having a look at!

…to be continued…

References:

  1. Bennett, Paul, Megalithic Ramblings between Ilkley and Baildon, unpublished: Shipley 1982.
  2. Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
  3. Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
  4. Morris, Ronald W.B., “The Prehistoric Rock Art of Great Britain: A Survey of All Sites Bearing Motifs more Complex than Simple Cup-marks,” in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, volume 55, 1989.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Baildon Moor Carving (184), West Yorkshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 14124 40447

Also Known as:

  1. Carving no.46 (Hedges)
Carving 184, Baildon Moor

Getting Here

From Baildon, take the road up onto the moors, turning left to go round Baildon Hill, then park-up at the small car-park on the brow of the hill at the edge of the golf course.  Cross the road and take the well-trod footpath diagonally right, heading onto Baildon Moor.  Walk along here for 300 yards and notice the large stone just to your right. You can’t really miss it!

Archaeology & History

Close-up of cups & faded ring

Listed without real comment in several surveys, this large sloping rock that looks over the north and western landscapes of Rombald’s Moor and beyond, has several simple cup-markings on its surface, one with a faded ring surrounding a cup.  In more recent centuries, someone began to add their own etching onto the stone but, thankfully, stopped before defacing the ancient markings.  I noted this carving in one of my early notebooks, saying only that it “lacked the central design found in others from this region,” being little more than a (seemingly) disorganized array of several marks.

Hedges 1986 drawing

A greater number of other carved stones scatter the grassy flatlands west and south of here, some of which are found in association with prehistoric cairns and lines of walling; but no such immediate relationship is visible here.

References:

  1. Bennett, Paul, Of Cups and Rings and Things, unpublished: Shipley 1981.
  2. Bennett, Paul, Megalithic Ramblings between Ilkley and Baildon, unpublished: Shipley 1982.
  3. Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Wakefield 2003.
  4. Hedges, John (ed.), The Carved Rocks on Rombalds Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
  5. Morris, Ronald W.B., “The Prehistoric Rock Art of Great Britain: A Survey of All Sites Bearing Motifs more Complex than Simple Cup-marks,” in Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, volume 55, 1989.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Witches’ Stone, Ratho, Midlothian

Cup-Marked Stone (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – NT 1273 6973

Witches Stone on 1817 map

Also Known as:

  1. Canmore ID 50366
  2. Witch’s Stone

Archaeology & History

This fascinating looking carving (in my personal Top 10 of all-time favourites cup-and-rings in the UK!) was unfortunately destroyed sometime between 1918 and 1920.  A huge pity, as the design on the rock is almost unique in its ‘linear’ system of cups running a considerable length across the surface of the stone (like the similar design found at Old Bewick in Northumberland).

Wilson’s 1851 drawing of the Witches’ Stone
Simpson’s 1866 drawing of the Witches Stone

Shown first of all on Kirkwood’s Environs of Edinburgh map in 1817 (above), this legendary rock was found amidst a cluster of other cup-and-ring stones at Tormain (some are still there) and was initially said by Daniel Wilson (1851) to have been the giant capstone of a cromlech that once stood here, but whose structure had fallen away.  This idea is implied in the earliest drawing we have of the stone in Wilson’s magnum opus (above); Sir J.Y. Simpson (1867) gave us a similar impression with his drawing a few years later.  But upon visiting the Witches Stone just as his book was going to the press, Mr Wilson visited the site and proclaimed that he “altogether doubted if they are the remains of a cromlech”, and what rested here were more probably just fascinating geological remains, with even more fascinating carvings on top!

In the years that followed Wilson’s initial description, the Witches Stone was visited and described by a number of eager antiquarians.  Simpson (1867) gave us a quite revealing account, telling:

“On the farm of Bonnington, about a mile beyond the village of Ratho…are the remains of ‘this partially ruined cromlech’…with the capstones partially displaced, as if it had slid backwards upon the oblique plane of the huge stones or stone which still supports it.  Two or three large blocks lie in front of the present props.  Its site occupies a most commanding view of the valley of the Almond, and of the country and hills beyond.  The large capstone is a block of secondary basalt or whinstone, about twelve feet long, ten in breadth and two in thickness.  Its upper surface has sculptured along its median line a long row of some twenty-two cup-cuttings; and two more cup-cuttings are placed laterally: one, half a foot to the left of the central row and at its base; the other, two feet to the right of the tenth central cup and near the edge of the block. The largest of the cups are about three inches in diameter and half an inch in depth; but most of them are smaller and shallower than this…”

A few years later another early petroglyph authority, J. Romilly Allen (1882), visited the Witches Stone and found “an Ordnance bench mark (had been) cut on the stone itself”!  He then continued with his own description of this once-important megalithic site:

“The Witch’s Stone is a natural boulder of whinstone, rounded and smoothed by glacial action, whoso upper surface slopes at an angle of about 35° with the horizon. The length of the sloping face is 8 feet and at the top is a flat place 2 feet wide. The breadth of the stone is 11 feet 3 inches at the upper end, and 4 feet at the lower end. The thickness varies from 2 to 3 feet. The highest part of the stone is 6 feet 6 inches above the ground, and the lowest 1 foot 6 inches. It rests on what has originally been a portion of the same boulder, but is now a mass of whinstone broken up into several fragments, which serve as supports to prop up the stone above.  Viewed from the north side the whole presents the appearance of a cromlech, the upper stone forming the cap, and the disintegrated portion below the supports. This notion, however, will be clearly seen to be erroneous on looking at it from the opposite side, as shown on the accompanying sketch…where the crack separating the two portions of the boulder is very apparent… The sculpturings consist of twenty-four cups varying in diameter from 1½ to 3 inches. Twenty-two of these cups are arranged in an approximately straight line along the sloping face of the stone, and divide it into two almost equal parts. The two remaining cups lie, one 7½ inches to the left of the lowest cup of the central row, and the other 2 feet 3 inches to the right of the ninth cup up the stone… The field in which the Witch’s Stone is situated is called “Knock-about.” The sloping face of the stone has been much polished by the practice of people climbing on to the top and sliding down. Some of the cups are almost obliterated in consequence. The stone forms a very prominent feature in the view, and must always have attracted attention from its peculiar shape.”

Some twenty years after Allen, the megalithomaniac Fred Coles (1903) came and checked the Witches Stone out for himself and, as happens, had a few additional things to say about the place:

“Although this huge boulder and its cup-marks have been more than once figured and described, I found, on a close examination of the broad surface of the Stone, that none of the illustrations showed the cup-marks in their exact relation to each other, nor in their true relation to the contour of the Stone. The drawing shown above…was made after a careful measurement by triangulation of the Stone; and it is claimed to be the first that shows that the cups, two and twenty in number, are not disposed in one continuous line, but that thirteen follow each other from the high south edge of the stone for a distance of exactly 6 feet, and nine others lie a few inches to the west, occupying a space 3 feet long of the overcurving edge of the north end.  It is further shown that, at a point 2 feet 3 inches west of the ninth cup-mark, there is another one quite as large as the largest in the rows near the middle of the Stone. The south edge (A B) has slipped a little down from its original height, the boulder being frost-split horizontally; its height there above ground is 8 feet. The northern and narrower end is about 2 feet above ground, and does not touch the ground, as it rests upon its lower portion, beyond which it projects a few inches. The cup-marks run due north.”

Fred Coles 1903 drawing

If the Witches Stone was in fact a natural outcrop stone and not a cromlech, this very last point telling that “the cup-marks run due north” probably had much greater importance than a mere compass-bearing to the people who etched this carving.  For in pre-christian religious structures across the northern hemisphere, north is commonly representative of death and the land of the gods.  In magickal rites “it is the place of greatest symbolic darkness,” as neither sun nor moon ever rise or set there.  Additionally, north is the place where, in shamanic traditions, the heavens are tied to the Earth: the cosmic axis itself that links heaven, Earth and underworld revolve around the northern axis in the skies.  In early neolithic traditions this mythic structure was endemic. Whether its magickal relevance was intended here, at this stone, we will probably never know…

Folklore

Folklore tells that the Witches Stone was one of the sites used in magickal rites by the Scottish occultist, Michael Scot.  J.R. Allen’s (1882) description of “the sloping face of the stone has been much polished by the practice of people climbing on to the top and sliding down,” may relate to folk memory of fertility rites once practised here, as found at similarly carved rocks in the UK and across the world.

…to be continued…

References:

  1. Allen, J. Romilly, “Notes on some Undescribed Stones with Cup Markings in Scotland,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland, volume 16, 1882.
  2. Coles, Fred R., “Notes on Some Hitherto Undescribed Cup-and-Ring Marked Stones,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland, volume 37, 1903.
  3. McLean, Adam, The Standing Stones of the Lothians, Megalithic Research Publications: Edinburgh no date (c.1978).
  4. Morris, Ronald W.B., The Prehistoric Rock Art of Southern Scotland, BAR: Oxford 1981.
  5. Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland, Inventory of Monuments and Constructions in the Counties of Midlothian and West Lothian, HMSO: Edinburgh 1929.
  6. Simpson, James, Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, etc., Upon Stones and Rocks in Scotland, England and other Countries, Edmonston & Douglas: Edinburgh 1867.
  7. Smith, John Alexander, “Notes of Rock Sculpturings of Cups and Concentric Rings, and ‘The Witch’s Stone’ on Tormain Hill; also of some Early Remains on the Kaimes Hill, near Ratho, Edinburghshire,” in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries Scotland, volume 10, 1874.
  8. Wilson, Daniel, The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, Sutherland & Knox: Edinburgh 1851.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Crook Farm north, Baildon Moor, West Yorkshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 13703 39616

Getting Here

This lovely cup-and-ring stone, Baildon Moor

Take the road up alongside and past Shipley Glen, taking the turn to go to Crook Farm caravan site. Go right to the end of the car-park, then walk up through the trees on your left.  Keep going uphill about 100 yards by the field-wall until it starts to level out – and shortly before the first gate into the field (on your right) keep your eyes peeled for the triangular stone in the ground, barely 10 yards away from the walling. You’re damn close!

Archaeology & History

W.E. Preston’s early photo of the carving

For some reason this has always been one of my favourite cup-and-ring stones on Baildon Moor and it’s well worth checking out if you visit the area! It was rediscovered by the Bradford historian W.E. Preston, who photographed the carving around 1912.  Shortly afterwards he took fellow historians Joseph Rycroft and W. Paley Baildon to see this (and others he’d located) and both a drawing and photo of the site was including in Mr Baildon’s (1913) magnum opus the following year.

As you can see from the relative photos—with literally 100 years between them—erosion hasn’t taken too much toll and this neolithic or Bronze Age carving remains in very good condition.

Joseph Rycroft’s early drawing
Close-up of one section

Covered with upwards of fifty cup-markings, there are also two cup-and-rings and numerous carved lines meandering around and enclosing some of the many cups.  It’s a fascinating design, with another ‘Cassiopeia’ cluster of cups in one section, beloved of archaeoastronomers who explore these stones.  Mr Rycroft’s drawing of the design (left) is perhaps the best one, to date.

Along this same ridge there are remains of other prehistoric sites, more cup-and-rings, remains of prehistoric walling and what may be a small cairn circle (to be described later).

References:

  1. Baildon, W. Paley, Baildon and the Baildons – parts 1-15, Adelphi: London 1913-1926.
  2. Bennett, Paul, Of Cups and Rings and Things, unpublished: Shipley 1981.
  3. Bennett, Paul, Megalithic Ramblings between Ilkley and Baildon, unpublished: Shipley 1982.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Baildon Moor Carving (150), West Yorkshire

Cup-and-Ring Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 13724 40096

Also Known as:

  1. Carving no.22 (Hedges)

Getting Here

Carving 150, with Dobrudden Stone to rear

Whether you come via Shipley Glen or Baildon, head for the Dobrudden caravan park on the western edge of Baildon Hill.  As you get to the entrance of the caravan site, turn right and walk along the outer walling of the caravan site, up and around for less than 100 yards.  Keep your eyes peeled for the upright stone against the outer walling (the famous Dobrudden Cup-and-Ring Stone), and just 10 yards away, laid flat in the grasses, you’ll see this small cup-and-ring stone!

Archaeology & History

Found just a few yards from the well-known Dobrudden Carving that stands up against the wall, this small flat level stone, slowly again being encroached by Earth’s skin, is found on the edge of the High Plain, whereon the usual conjunction of prehistoric tombs and cup-and-rings is found once again.  Whether this carving ever had its own cairn or funerary monument is now hard to say for sure; and the excessive erosion of modern humans is slowly eradicating the landscape all round here.

Jackson’s 1956 drawing
Hedges 1986 drawing

Consisting of two cup-and-rings (with very deep cupmarks in the centres), there are also what seem like artificially carved lines or grooves running across the stone.  It was first described in a short article in the Cartwright Hall Archaeology Group Bulletin (Jackson 1956)*, found lying “in the path alongside the north wall of the Dobrudden Farm enclosure.”  It seems like stone may have been covered over until some local work on Dobrudden unearthed it in the latter half of the 20th century.  There’s also an intriguing note told by a local man called Jack Taylor, which Jackson narrated, saying how he,

“always held the opinion that the rings were not contemporary with the cups, and went so far as to suggest that they had been carved within living memory by someone anxious to ‘improve’ the boulder.”

This might be the case, as there is another carving not far away near the top of Baildon Hill that certainly seems to have been done in the 20th century.  And one of the two surrounding rings on this stone does appear to have a more recent look to it than the other.  However, we must consider that the covering soil has kept the carved rings in such good condition. (There are examples of petroglyphs throughout the world where certain carved elements were added at later times by countless aboriginal tribes.)

Close-up of cup-and-rings
Dobrudden carving 150

Like all of these carvings, to get an accurate picture of the true original we must visit them in all weathers all through the year, to see how differing seasons express the petroglyph. For we can see on some images we have of this carving a number of features that aren’t on the drawings of either Jackson (1956) or Hedges (1986): whether the rings surrounding the cups are ancient or not, there is a definite carved line nearly linking them together; and at least one faint line stretches down from one of the rings.  We need to visit the carving again to see if such features show up with greater clarity when lighting conditions are better.

References:

  1. Baildon, W. Paley, Baildon and the Baildons – parts 1-15, Adelphi: London 1913-1926.
  2. Bennett, Paul, Megalithic Ramblings between Ilkley and Baildon, unpublished: Shipley 1982.
  3. Boughey, Keith & Vickerman, E.A., Prehistoric Rock Art of the West Riding, WYAS: Leeds 2003.
  4. Hedges, John, The Carved Rocks on Rombald’s Moor, WYMCC: Wakefield 1986.
  5. Jackson, Sidney, “Another Cup-and-Ring Boulder,” in Bradford Cartwright Hall Archaeology Group Bulletin, 1:13, 1956.

* Boughey & Vickerman (2003) cited W. P. Baildon’s magnum opus (1913) as the first to describe this stone, but this is untrue (there’s certainly no mention nor illustration of it in my editions of the Baildon volumes).

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Hope Farm Field, Baildon Moor, West Yorkshire

Cup-Marked Stone:  OS Grid Reference – SE 13856 39599

Getting Here

Cup-marked line of old walling

Whether you come via Shipley Glen or Baildon, head for the Dobrudden caravan park on the western edge of Baildon Hill.  As you get to the entrance of the caravan site, walk down (left) the footpath outside the park itself, looking across the grasslands, left, to the tree-lined wall a coupla hundred yards away.  Head for that.  Then go through the gate into the field where you’ll see a denuded line of walling, with what looks like some standing stones along it.  That’s where you need to be!

Archaeology & History

First noticed on February 12, 2012, this simple cup-marked stone is another one that’s probably only of interest to the purists amongst you.  Found below the southern end of Baildon Hill, due west of the lost Hope Farm cup-and-ring stone, the cup-markings here are on the north-face of an upright stone in an old wall.  It’s obvious that this stone was once earthfast, when the carving faced the zenith or night sky, and has been cut in half and turned 90° making the cups more difficult to notice; and very obviously the rock was originally close to its present position in the walling.

Primary cupmark, right-side of stone
Close-up of cup/s

Found in an area rich in cup-and-ring stones, there’s just one singular cupmark that’s obvious on this stone; but as we looked back and forth, feeling the stone with our fingers, it seemed there may be a couple of others on the rock.  We need to come back here again in better lighting conditions, as opposed to the old grey day She gave us yesterday, and see if the others are real or simple geological marks.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian


Ashlar Chair, Burley Moor, West Yorkshire

Legendary Rock:  OS Grid Reference – SE 12075 44833

Ashlar Chair, looking southeast

Also Known as:

  1. Carving no.111 (Hedges)
  2. Carving no.115 (Boughey & Vickerman)
  3. Druid’s Chair
  4. Etching Stone

Getting Here

There are two large boulders here, one of which was deemed the Ashlar many moons back. You can approach it from the lazy way: park y’ car at the top of the road by the Whetstone Gate TV masts and walk east right along the boundary path till you get here. The better way is from Twelve Apostles: from there walk a coupla hundred yards north to the Lanshaw Lad boundary stone, where a small path heads west. Along here for another coupla hundred yards, then hit the footpath south for the roughly the same distance again. You’ve arrived!

Archaeology & History

The Ashlar Chair is ascribed in folklore, said Harry Speight (1892), “to be a relic of druidism,” as one of its titles in ages past was the Druid’s Chair.  In the nineteenth century it also became known as the Etching Stone, (Smith 1961-63) but it has retained its present title for more than two hundred years.  Shaped more like a couch than a chair, its present title—the Ashlar—is important in ritual Freemasonry, which has two aspects to it: the ‘rough’ and the ‘perfect’.  The first represents the neophyte; the latter, the illumined one.  Oaths are sworn on the ashlar, and laws are spoken from it.  In its higher aspect it is representative of the spiritual maturity  of evolved man.

Ashlar Chair on 1851 map

Although there are no public records as to who gave the site its present name, the land which lays before it, The Square, is an even greater indicator that this rock was was considerably more than just a curious place-name, for the open moorland that is overseen from Ashlar Chair—The Square — is 396,000 square yards of flat open heathlands that have never been archaeologically explored.  The Square is also one of the most important elements of Freemasonry: representing the manifest universe, its laws are spoken from the Ashlar. (Jones 1950)

Between the two of them, represented here in the landscape near the very tops of these moors, we have a form of late geomancy, although the names of our geomancers are nowhere to be found.  It is obvious though, simply from the name of the land, that dramatic ritual of some form was enacted here.  In recent times, ritual magickians from differing Orders have found the place most effective, as have wiccan folk and other pagans who have frequented it at the summer solstice.  The possibility that some members of the Grand Lodge of ALL England (a legendary Masonic Order, said by the modern London masons not to have existed until the eighteenth century) gave this place its name is not unreasonable.  Records show that in the fourteenth century at least one member of the Order, Sir Walter Hawksworth, frequented ritual circles on these moors; and another member of the same Lodge from the nearby Washburn valley was an ally to the Pendle and Washburn witches who, we know, met on these moors at Twelve Apostles stone circle and probably the Ashlar.  But it proves nothing I suppose. (I tend to believe (not a necessarily healthy viewpoint) that the Grand Lodge did use the Ashlar as one of their moot points, along with the Pendle and Washburn witches.)

Its primary geomantic attribute is as an omphalos.  Geographically the Ashlar Chair is the meeting-point of Bingley, Burley, Morton and Ilkley moors and, metaphorically speaking, when you stand here you are outside the confines of the four worlds yet still a purveyor of them.

Nature’s cups-and-grooves on the Ashlar

Upon the large rock itself it are carved the faint initials, “MM, BTP, ISP and IG, 1826.”  Several early records described cup-and-ring designs on the Ashlar: firstly in Forrest & Grainge’s (1868) archaeological tour; then in Collyer & Turner’s Ilkley (1885); and lastly by the great Yorkshire historian and topographer Harry Speight (1892, 1900), who said “it bears numerous cups and channels.”  Although we can see some of these on top of the Ashlar, they are mainly Nature’s handiwork.  It is possible that some man-made cup-and-rings once existed on the rock, but if so they have eroded over time.

References:

  1. Bennett, Paul, The Old Stones of Elmet, Capall Bann: Milverton 2001.
  2. Collyer, Robert & Turner, J.H., Ilkley Ancient & Modern, William Walker: Leeds 1885.
  3. Forrest, C. & Grainge, William, A Ramble on Rumbald’s Moor, among the Dwellings, Cairns and Circles of the Ancient Britons in the Summer of 1867 – Part 1, W.T. Lamb: Wakefield 1868.
  4. Jones, Bernard E., Freemason’s Guide and Compendium, Harrap: London 1950.
  5. Speight, Harry, Chronicles & Stories of Old Bingley and District, Elliott Stock: London 1892.
  6. Speight, Harry, Upper Wharfedale, Elliott Stock: London 1900.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian